Fallen (17 page)

“Yes! God, yes!”

He doesn’t hold back after that. He immediately starts to push up into me, but I lift myself off him, stopping him in his tracks. “No.” I shake my head. “Not there, Zeth. You don’t want to be there. You want to be where your finger is.”

Even in the dark, I can see the fire intensify in his eyes. His whole body is suddenly vibrating underneath me, but he still says, “You’re sure that’s what I want?” He doesn’t mean that, though. He’s asking me if it’s what
I
want. He’s never done that before. Not ever.

“Yes, Zeth. It’s what you want. It’s what you really,
really
want.”

He doesn’t need telling twice. He inserts his hands under my thighs and lifts me, sliding himself forward so that he’s lying a little flatter on the mattress and is slowly, carefully pushing upward. Pain like no other grabs hold of me, but then he’s working his fingers over my clit, teasing me, forcing the pleasure back into my body. The war between the sensations seems to be waged for no more than thirty seconds before the pain and pleasure seem to combine. I begin to push back against him. I can barely breathe; my body feels like the end of a live wire, ready to spark and burst into flames as soon it’s touched.

Zeth slides a little flatter onto his back, bridging his legs. Strong hands press against the flat of my stomach, and he guides me back so that I’m leaning against his thighs. My bound hands are in the perfect place to stroke over those thighs; tensed and powerful, they feel amazing to my touch. In this position, Zeth has better leverage to thrust into me, but he doesn’t. He lies completely still, watching me, letting me move as fast as I like, which means I’m in total control. Even knowing that makes me braver; I use my hamstrings to lift myself, and then I set in a rhythm, working up and down. It hurts, but it’s the most intensely enjoyable pain I’ve ever experienced.

Zeth rumbles deep in his chest, his fingers digging into my skin everywhere—my breasts, my hips, my back, my thighs. He doesn’t seem to know where he wants to touch me more. It feels like he wants to pull me in every single direction and crush me to him all at the same time. I really begin to lose it when he pinches my clit. I buck against him, gasping, and it sets of a chain reaction of sensation—a rapidly rising burst of pleasure, emanating from deep within the very core of me.

“Oh, fuck. Fuck, Zeth. I’m gonna—I can’t—”

“Ride it, angry girl. Do your worst,” he rasps out, and then I’m coming. I can’t stop myself. This orgasm is different to any he’s ever given me before. It’s so intense my eyes are literally watering. It doesn’t feel as though it’s overcoming me, but rather breaking me apart instead. Shattering me. I can feel the slickness of my come all over Zeth’s fingers, all over his pelvis, and I’m not ashamed. I’m so, so turned on, I can barely see straight.

“Oh, shit, Sloane, you’re so fucking tight. I’m gonna fucking come inside you.” Zeth’s muscles tense so hard, it feels like I’m being held in a vice. He roars, his body locked tight underneath me, his back curved up. It’s as though he’s lost complete control over himself; he rocks up and forward, wrapping his arms around my body, his forehead pressed against my shoulder.

My heart is still slamming in my chest. Zeth remains there, panting, and I have such an unbearable urge to reach forward and wrap my arms around him. To hold him to me. I can’t, though; my wrists are still cuffed behind my back. My post-orgasmic haze doesn’t last very long, either. It suddenly becomes very, very painful to have Zeth positioned where he’s still positioned. Still hard and still throbbing.

I wriggle, and Zeth instantly lifts me off him. Without saying a word, he uncuffs me and removes the collar from my neck. I collapse in a boneless heap on the bed, wincing at the strange and moderately unpleasant stinging that I now have to contend with.

Zeth just stares at me, his eyes a little distant. “Worth it?” he asks.

I feel laughter building in my chest, but I quickly stifle it; laughter seems like a very bad idea right now. God knows how much of a mess I’m in, and I sure as hell don’t want to make it worse. “Worth it,” I tell him.

I carefully get up, tensing my muscles against the unique discomfort I now find myself in, and I turn to look him over. I can’t see any blood pouring from his injury, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in a lot pain after that. “How about you?” I ask him. “Worth it?”

A faint grin spreads across his face. I doubt it’s a conscious thing—he probably has no idea how breathtakingly beautiful he is when he smiles like that. That might seem like a strange way to think of him, but it’s true. He’s beautiful in the same savage way that most of Mother Nature’s truly dangerous creations are. “Yes,” he tells me. “Worth a lot more.”

That makes me grin, too, but I manage to hide mine as I collect the towel that I abandoned on the floor an hour ago. It’s extremely gratifying to know that he enjoys being with me as much as I enjoy being with him. I never thought it would be so important to me, but it is. Zeth doesn’t ask me where I’m going when I head for the door. Suffice it to say I feel the need for another shower. I’m halfway out of the door when he says, “Hey, angry girl?”

“Yeah?” Oh, boy. I’m even answering to the name now. Zeth gives me one of his patented
I’m-such-an-asshole
smirks.

“Just so you know,” he says. “You’re very good at that game.”

First day back.

6:14 a.m.

Absolutely freaking perfect.

Since my car was towed to the wrecker’s yard after the crash, Zeth volunteered Michael to get me to work. The poor guy drove like a madman, but still…even early morning traffic heading into Seattle is a bitch, and now I’m late.

Pre-Zeth Sloane would be losing her cool right now, but as I walk through the doors of St. Peter’s, the me that takes risks and does things that could possibly land a person in jail isn’t all that bothered. Fourteen minutes in the history of my career as a doctor. Fourteen minutes won’t kill anyone. The niggly Pippa voice tuts at the back of my head, airing out its disapproval—
fourteen minutes
could
kill someone
.
If there was an accident and you were late to work, and there was no one available to treat
—

I cut off the pointless narrative as I rifle through my locker and pluck out clean scrubs. Hair tie to pull back my hair, hand sanitizer in the pocket, flats changed over to sneakers, and this doctor is ready for work. I’m stuffing my clothes into my locker when I notice the orange envelope that’s half slipped in between my hairbrush and an emergency unopened can of Red Bull on the top shelf. Working at the hospital is a lot like high school in some respects—there’s plenty of drama and people sleeping with other people they shouldn’t be, and when we want to pass notes to each other, we shove them through the vents in each other’s lockers. Or rather other people shove notes into other people’s lockers. I have neither shoved nor been the shove-ee before. I collect up the envelope and stick it into the pocket of my pants. Maybe I’ll catch a moment to read it later, after I try to slip onto the emergency room floor without my tardiness being noted.

As it goes, no one makes any comments because the place is in uproar when I arrive. There’s a rapidly spreading pool of blood on the floor, and three nurses are trying to pin a patient—a young woman, vomiting said blood, who appears to be convulsing at the same time.

“Dr. Romera, if you’ve got a minute!” the male nurse calls, wrestling to keep the woman’s arms from flailing so wildly. If the woman is having a seizure, standard procedure is to the support the head and leave the limbs well alone, but this woman’s in a gurney. She could break her arm if she hits the rails.

I rush to the patient, reaching for my flashlight. When I shine the light into the woman’s eyes, the pinpricks of her irises tighten even farther.

“Has anyone taken bloodwork?” I ask.

“Doubt she’s got any left!” the nurse—it’s Paul, one of the longest serving members of staff at St. Peter’s—grunts out. “We’d have tried but we can’t get her still enough.”

“How long has she been seizing?”

An EMT appears in the scuffle, blood sprayed up her face. She looks like she’s in shock; a narrow yellow band across her right top pocket might look like a regular part of her uniform to a member of the public, but it tells me that she’s probationary. “Four minutes in the rig. She—she was complaining of stomach pains and then—I didn’t—there was so much blood!”

I look around for the girl’s partner, but there’s no one to be seen. “Where’s your senior paramedic?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. She ran to the bathroom as soon as we got the patient inside.”

A series of possibilities are forming inside my mind. “Okay, either way she’s been seizing too long. Push ten ccs Fosphenytoin. We need to move her to radiology. We need to see what’s going on inside her. Ma’am? Ma’am?” I get no response. Not that I really expected one. Still, I have to try. “Ma’am? Have you taken any medication?”

Nothing.

“What you got?” Oliver appears out of nowhere, relieving one of the nurses who was trying to get hold of the woman’s legs. An instant sense of relief floods me. It’s one thing being thrown into the deep end after being away from work, but it’s another thing entirely having someone die on you within the first three minutes of your shift.

“Vomiting blood. Grand mal seizures. Could be Wilson’s,” I tell him.

Another nurse returns with the Fosphenytoin and lifts the woman’s sleeve to find a vein. Shock races around the team working on her as we all see the liquid-filled blisters marking the woman’s skin.

“This isn’t Wilson’s,” I say, almost to myself. I lift her shirt from her stomach and the blisters are all over her belly, too. They’re everywhere. Practically forming right before my eyes. No, this isn’t Wilson’s disease. This is something much, much worse. “Everyone, get into hazmat.
Right now
,” I clip out. “She has chemical poisoning.”

******

The thing about chemical poisoning is that, ever since 9/11, whenever a case presents itself, a small part of your brain instantly starts screaming TERRORIST ATTACK! TERRORIST ATTACK! in giant capital letters. News reporters often tend to do the same.

There are four news vans outside St Peter’s by the time our patient dies. Nannette Richards was only twenty-six, just finished a masters in marine biology, and apparently on her way to the airport to go and visit her boyfriend in Florida when she dropped down on the ground and started seizing in a gas station three miles from the airport.

There would probably be less panic revolving around Nannette’s death if the EMT who brought her in and provided mouth to mouth resuscitation hadn’t immediately fallen sick and also started vomiting blood, too. Now it seems as though the whole hospital is falling apart. A lockdown order went out thirty minutes ago, at which point four nurses came around and confiscated our cell phones, to avoid ‘unnecessary panic to the public’ should we decide to tell our family members or loved ones something that might be taken out of context.

“My mom called me eight times earlier. She’s probably losing her shit right now. She’s totally going to think my face has melted off like that guy in
The Rock
,” Oliver informs me, as we stand on the peripheries of the ER floor. We’ve been observing the breakdown in civilization as patients try to leave and are subsequently told by security to return to their seats until the good doctors—my colleagues and I—can ascertain if they’ve all been infected with some violent and deadly strain of biological warfare. The guards don’t use those words, of course. The term, ‘for your own safety’ is bandied around a lot, as is ‘thank you for your patience.’

Oliver shifts, scrubbing his hands up and down his face. “Do you think we’ll be out of here by dinner? I have somewhere I need to be.”

“Hot date?” I ask. His frown grows significantly deeper.

“My sister’s in town. She’s supposed to be crashing at my apartment, but if she can’t get in…”

He looks pissed. Everyone is pissed. The patients, security, the nurses, the other doctors. Me. I’m pissed that something so absolutely and categorically unheard of would happen on my very first day back at work. Like I haven’t had enough drama over the past few weeks. “Sorry, Ol. Maybe she can book into a hotel for the night?”

Oliver scoffs at that. “You’ve clearly never met my sister. Hey.” He shoves an elbow into my ribs. “There’s Bochowitz.”

Sure enough, Bochowitz’s half-bald head, complete with wispy tufts of white hair rimming his skull, is visible across the emergency room. His lumbering, slightly off-kilter gait is bringing him straight for us. Bochowitz and I have a bit of a soft spot for one another; he taught me so much when I used to go and visit him down in the very bowels of the hospital, where the morgue is situated. And in return I used to keep him permanently stocked in nicotine replacement patches. If I didn’t bring him the patches, he’d be smoking a pack a day at least. The man’s usually obscenely happy, but today he gives me a grim smile as he reaches us.

He gets right to it. “It’s not a contagion. There was a laceration to the dermis at the back of her neck. That looks like the point of entry. There’s no evidence of any poison in her system whatsoever, but her symptoms before death indicate she
was
poisoned.”